{"id":453,"date":"2007-09-06T21:04:41","date_gmt":"2007-09-07T02:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=453"},"modified":"2007-09-06T21:04:41","modified_gmt":"2007-09-07T02:04:41","slug":"Say a prayer for Central America...","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=453","title":{"rendered":"Say a prayer for Central America&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I completely missed the news earlier this week about Hurricane Felix making landfall as a Category 5 hurricane on the east coast of Nicaragua, in Puerto Cabezas. Yes, it&#8217;s a long way from where I spent more than 2 years living and working, but my heart will always be burdened for Nicaragua and Central America. We all remember what damage Hurricane Katrina left as a Category 5 storm 2 years ago here in the US, and I can&#8217;t imagine winds of 160 miles an hour battering the tiny wood and tin shacks that many people call home down there. <\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abcnews.go.com\/International\/wireStory?id=3565109\" target=\"_blank\">ABC News&#8217; most recent update<\/a>, and a few quotes that hit me&#8230;<\/p>\n<table style=\"WIDTH: 90%\" cellspacing=\"10\" cellpadding=\"10\" align=\"center\" border=\"1\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"WIDTH: 100%\">&quot;Felix swept over the Miskito Coast, an <em>impoverished region<\/em> where about 150,000 people live in jungle settlements. Their hamlets of wooden shacks and coconut groves are remote even in good weather, reachable only by air or flat-bottom boats.&quot; <br \/>**(I think &quot;impoverished region&quot; is a relative term when, by American standards, the entire country of Nicaragua would be considered impoverished. This really means, &quot;the poorest of the poor&quot;.)<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Many had feared a repeat of the 1998 nightmare of Hurricane Mitch, which stalled over Central America for days, causing floods and mudslides that killed nearly 11,000 people and left more than 8,000 missing.&quot; <br \/>**(I was in Nicaragua just months after Hurricane Mitch, and I know the lasting emotional &#8211; and physical &#8211; scar that it has left on the people all over the country. Thankfully, this storm doesn&#8217;t look to be as devastating, but any hurricane brings fear and leaves the country yet another step backward in their &quot;two-steps-forward-one-step-back&quot; economic struggle.&quot;<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>San Pedro Sula, Honduras is also recovering from the torrential rains, and it has been a &quot;home port&quot; for Mercy Ships for a long time.&nbsp; Please keep the people of Central America in your prayers as they recover from the storm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I completely missed the news earlier this week about Hurricane Felix making landfall as a Category 5 hurricane on the east coast of Nicaragua, in Puerto Cabezas. Yes, it&#8217;s a long way from where I spent more than 2 years living and working, but my heart will always be burdened for Nicaragua and Central America. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkzLf-7j","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}